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ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 




At Albany, October 7, 1859, 



BY JOHN J±. DIX. 



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Ai Albany, October 7, 185®. 




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ALBANY: 

PRINTED BY C. VAN BENTHtTYSEN. 

1859. 



ADD R E S S . 

.Mr. Preside/it. Ladies. Gentlemen of the 

Society, Fellow-citizens: 

Twelve rears ago I had the honor to appear 
before this Society at one of its annual exhibi- 
tions in a neighbouring county, under circum- 
stances of a peculiar character. I did not come 
then, as I do now. to present any views or state 
any conclusions of my own in regard to the great 
interest, to which your labors are devoted: but 
to perform the vicarious service of reading to you 
the address prepared for the occasion by Silas 
Weight. Most of you, I do not doubt, remember 
well that the address was written by its distin- 
guished author during the intervals of agricultu- 
ral labor through the summer harvest — not the 
mere labor of sirperintendenee, but earnest and 
thorough field-work, with the scythe, the rake 
and the hay-fork, standing side by side with his 
laborers, and measuring his own strength with 
theirs. A few hours after the closing line- of 
the address were written, he died suddenly of an 



affection of the heart. They wen-, probably, the 
Las! lines traced by his pen; and there is no doubt 
that the Budden termination of his life is to be 

ascribed to the equally sudden change of his 
habits — from the sedentary occupations of twenty 
years lb court-rooms* executive bureaus and legis- 
lative halls, to the hard labor of a farm. It might, 
at first glance, seem more in harmony with the 
tenor of his public career, if he had fallen in the 
Senate chamber — the theatre on which his dis- 
tinction was chiefly earned. But those who know 
how little he prized public office and its honors, 
how much more he loved the quietude of the 
country and the occupations of rural life, cannot 
but regard the closing scenes of his earthly pil- 
grimage as peculiarly in accordance with the tone 
of his thoughts, the simplicity of his character, 
and his devotion, throughout his whole official 
career, to the cause of productive industry. 

It is no small distinction to the agriculture of 
the country and the State to have numbered 
among its followers a man of so much talent and 
purity, [f it had been in the order of Providence 
that he should have lived to attain the highest 
political honors of the republic, his incorruptible 
integrity, his conscientiousness, his firmness, 
an I his thorough acquaintance with the details of 



public business must have told with great effect 
upon the administration of our national affairs, by 
checking . extravagant expenditure, correcting 
abuses, and giving steadiness to the movement of 
the government in critical emergencies ; and at 
the close of his labors he would have returned 
with the same simplicity and unaffected zeal to 
the cultivation of his farm. 

I have not alluded to this subject for the mere 
purpose of paying a tribute of respect to the 
memory of a departed statesman, peculiarly con- 
nected as he was with the cause of agriculture, 
and with the proceedings of this Society ; but as 
an appropriate introduction also to the principal 
subject of his address — the importance of the 
foreign grain and provision market to the farm- 
ers of the United States. 

Twelve years ago this subject was scarcely 
deemed worthy of a place in our schemes of do- 
mestic economy ; and it is one of the strong evi- 
dences of Gov. Wright's sagacity and forecast 
that he should have made it the leading topic of 
discussion in his address. Indeed it had acquired, 
at the time he was discussing it, an importance 
of which he himself was not aware. Our exports 
of breadstuff's and provisions in 1846 were a little 
less than $28,000,000. In 1847, they rose to 



nearly sT'.UMHUHH) ; bul at the time he was pre* 
paring his address the statistics of the year had 
not been collected and published- 

During the last fifteen years these exports of 
our agriculture have made a great though not 
a steady advance, and it may he safely assumed 
by agriculturists that there Avill be a constant 
demand in the European markets for the products 
of their industry — a demand as uniform as the 
varying productiveness of different years abroad 
will admit. I think it may be stated as a propo- 
sition from which the farmers of the country 
may draw conclusions, and by which they may 
he guided in their practical operations, that Eu- 
rope cannot raise a sufficient amount of food for 
the consumption of its increasing population, and 
that even with the most abundant harvests there 
will be an annual deficiency, which can only be 
supplied by the United States. 

This whole subject has been treated witli great 
ability by Mr. John Jay, of the city of New York, 
in an address on the Statistics of American Agri- 
culture before the American Geographical and 
Statistical Society; and I shall draw largely 
from the materials collected by him in support of 
the proposil ion I have stated. 

It is well known that in most of the principal 



states of Europe, and nearly all the minor, the 
increase of population, though small in propor- 
tion to the rate of increase in the United States, 
is greater than that of the means of subsistence. 
In old and thickly settled countries, it must, of 
necessity, be so. The best lands having been 
long under cultivation, poorer soils must be re- 
sorted to as population increases, and with it the 
demand for food ; and the difficult question always 
arises (a question only to be settled by experi- 
ment,) whether the products of these soils will be 
equal to the increased demand for them ; or, in 
other words, whether the whole labor of the addi- 
tional population can extract from them a supply 
of food sufficient for its subsistence ? This ques- 
tion may be considered settled, not only in Great 
Britain, but in most of the countries of central 
and southern Europe. The conclusion has been 
manifesting itself for years in practical, and not 
always the wisest measures, to remedy an incon- 
venience felt, rather than accounted for by any 
rational investigation of its causes, — sometimes 
by the prohibition of the exportation of bread- 
stuffs, and at others by the imposition of duties 
on foreign grains to protect and stimulate domes- 
tic production. In the meantime the deficiency 
has been continually increasing, and large masses 



ofpeople have been supported by constantly di- 
minishing amounts of food. France, as a nation, 
lias not enough to eat. It is estimated that four 
millions of her inhabitants do not oat broad. The 
vine, an exhausting crop, which gives back to the 
earth none of the nutrimenl extracted from it, 
takes an immense extent of surface from the pro- 
duction of grain, and in central and southern 
Europe, as well as in France, is annually increas- 
ing the necessity for supplies of foreign bread- 
st nil's. In the last named country, too, the culti- 
vation of the beet root for the sugar manufacture 
has reduced the surface for the production of 
grain; and, on a recent occasion, the Emperor 
found it necessary to allow its free importation 
from other countries. In England, the deficiency 
of bread. Sufi's has become still more apparent ; 
and though she exported largely a century ago, 
she is now a Large importer, and her inhabitants 
cannot be subsisted on what she produces. She 
may be considered, from the density of her popu- 
lation, as having Dearly, if not quite, reached 
her maximum capacity \'>>\- production: and the 
one thousand people added every day in the year 
to tie- number of her inhabitants, must be sub- 
Bisted by imported food. 

This increasing demand for food in Europe has 



been largely supplied by us. During the last 
eleven years our exports of breadstuffs and pro- 
visions have averaged over $47,000,000 per 
annum ; and of the exports of 1847, over $55,000,- 
000 went to Europe. Their increase will be bet- 
ter understood by comparing the last seven years 
with the preceding seven. During the former 
period they averaged a little over $31,000,000, 
and during the latter nearly $50,000,000. The 
average of 185G and 1857, was over $75,000,000. 
In 1858, we had, in some of the large wheat-pro- 
ducing States, a short crop, and the exports of 
the year may show a diminution. Fluctuations 
in the amount of agricultural exports are un- 
avoidable. A deficient crop in any country 
necessarily limits its ability to export — as it can 
only part with the surplus which remains after 
supplying its own people. This inability in the 
countries of Europe to supply their own inhabi- 
tants with food, the certainty that it must become 
greater as population increases, and the assurance 
that it can only be met by the products of our 
own agricultural industry, make the subject one 
of the most interesting and important that can 
encase the attention of the American farmer and 
statesman. It concerns the prosperity and the 
2 



10 

progress of the country for centuries to come, and 
its exemption from any serious or lasting distur- 
bance of our friendly relations with European 
powers. No country can afford to quarrel with 
.•mother, from which it derives the means of sub- 
sistence. Nor can the country which furnishes 
the supply afford to part with its valuable cus- 
tomer. There is every reason, therefore, to ex- 
pect that questions of dispute will be discussed 
and adjusted in a spirit of mutual forbearance ; 
and where such a spirit exists, there can be no 
long continued alienation. 

To you, gentlemen, as a part of the agricultu- 
ral interest of the country, the question presents 
itself under a variety of the most important as- 
pects. Can the production of food in this coun- 
try be made to keep pace with the European 
demand for it ? In other words, can the additions 
to be annually made to the population of Europe 
be sustained by the export of our agricultural 
products? This is a great question of political 
economy, which may be elucidated by theory, 
but the answer to which the farming interest of 
the country must work out in practice. 

There is certainly no country better adapted 
than ours to become the granary of the world It 
occupies the most favorable portion of the North 



11 

American continent for production, neither run- 
ning up to the regions of severe cold on the one 
hand, nor to those of excessive heat on the other. 
It is the great temperate district of the western 
hemisphere, and yet so extensive as to embrace 
every variety of vegetation, which does not re- 
quire the stimulus of intertropical heat. Navi- 
gable rivers, almost unequalled in the surfaces 
which they water, are so many great natural 
channels for conveying our products to the Atlan- 
tic Ocean, which has, within our limits, a coast of 
nearly seven thousand miles in extent, affording 
extraordinary facilities for commerce. A few 
hundred miles back from the coast a range of 
mountains, with a mean altitude of 2500 feet, 
runs from north to south, and in the more heated 
districts furnishes on its slopes the mitigated tem- 
perature which arises from elevation. Our terri- 
torial area, including California and Oregon, is 
nearly 3,000,000 of square miles — a larger surface 
than that of Russia in Europe. British America 
has a little over 3,000,000, but a large portion is 
locked up. in hyperborean frost. Taking the At- 
lantic district, from the Gulf of Mexico to the 
Lakes, with the vast territory drained by the 
Mississippi and its tributaries, embracing alto- 
gether a surface of nearly 2,200,000 square miles, 



12 
and I believe it may be safely said thai there is do 

region OD earth of the same magnitude, which has 
an equal capacity for production. With the ex- 
ception of New. England and tin' middle States, 
there are in every portion of this extended dis- 
trict large quantities, of the most fertile land, 
which the hand of agriculture has not yet touch- 
ed ; and I believe it may also be said that there 
is no portion, of any considerable extent, which 
is absolutely unproductive. Of the Pacific dis- 
trict we know little, except from the constant 
tide of treasure, which for ten years has been 
setting into our Atlantic cities. Enough, how- 
ever, has been gleaned from the hasty and imper- 
fect explorations which have been made, to assure 
us that over this great district the richest fields 
of grain are hereafter to wave, and that number 
less herds of cattle are to range through meadows 
and over mountain slopes clad with grasses unsur- 
passed in luxuriance. There is a great district, 
spreading out from the eastern slope of the Rocky 
Mountains, which nature, it is said, has consigned 
to perpetual barrenness. Scientific observations 
seem to warrant this conclusion. But let us not 
decide too hastily. I remember when it was 
asserted, on the basis of actual exploration, that 
there was only fertile territory enough between 



13 

tne Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains for four 
States of the size of New York ; and yet a sur- 
face vastly more extended is now occupied under 
State or Territorial governments, and promises to 
rival in productiveness the richest soils in the 
Union. We all remember that it was demonstra- 
ted on principles of natural science that the 
Atlantic ocean could not be navigated by steam. 
And yet, in a few years afterwards, steamers 
were regularly crossing it, with voyages averaging 
from ten to fifteen days, and they are now so 
multiplied that they threaten to supersede sailing 
vessels in carrying on the commerce of America 
with Europe. Science never fails to give the 
true solution of a problem, if it is in possession of 
all the elements which belong to it. It may be 
that there are elements of production in the 
region referred to, which have escaped observa- 
tion, and that it may, at least, be found, as I 
believe it will, to be much less extended than is 
supposed. 

I have thus briefly alluded, gentlemen, to the 
physical characteristics of the immense region 
over which dominion has been, in the order of 
Providence, given to you and your fellow coun- 
trymen. It is the noblest inheritance ever be- 
stowed by the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe 



14 

on any race of men thai has inhabited the earth. 
We possess it, too, under advantages which no 
other people ever enjoyed. Our independence 
as ;i nation was almost coeval with the new im- 
pulse given to the natural sciences by the genius 
of the old world. They have in our own day 
reached a point from which there seems to be 
little left to be accomplished in the future, except 
through the application of established principles. 
We know the elementary substances which enter 
into the composition of organized and unorganized 
bodies. There is nothing we deal with, of which 
we do not know the nature and the characteristic 
properties. We understand, in all its intricacies, 
the marvelous mechanism of the human constitu- 
tion — all but the etherial spirit which animates 
it, and the knowledge of which alone, as an ema- 
nation of the Divine essence, the great Creator 
reserves to himself till the fullness of our time 
shall come. During the last few years, natural 
science, which had expended its labors on 
astronomy, chemistry, geology, and the me- 
chanic arts, has been turned to the great field 
of Agriculture. It has analyzed soils and dis- 
closed their constituents; it has taught us the 
composition of plants, the nature of the food they 
require, and the degree in which they extract 



15 

from the earth its principles of fertility and im- 
pair its capacity for their reproduction. 

It is thus armed that we are entering on the 
great work of subduing the untamed soils of the 
western hemisphere, and making them yield what 
is needed for our own sustenance and for the un- 
fed multitudes of the old world. I say we are 
just entering on this work, for only about one- 
thirteenth part of our vastly extended territory 
is under cultivation. Small as this portion is, I 
fear but little of it is improved as it should be. 
Our whole system of agriculture has been one 
of gradual spoliation. The soil, which we should 
have at least preserved unimpaired in fertility, 
has been rapidly deteriorating in our hands. The 
southern planter has been in the habit of extract- 
ing crop after crop of tobacco and corn from his 
lands, and when they had lost all capacity for 
production, of abandoning them, and emigrating, 
with his negroes, to new soils. The northern 
farmer has done the same thing, not without 
some feeble attempts, perhaps, in most cases, to 
keep up, by rotation of crops, the average fer- 
tility of his land ; and multitudes, who have 
emigrated from the east, are carrying on the 
same process of exhaustion on the prairies of 
Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa. I was last spring 



16 

in a city in one of these States, on the Missis- 
sippi, «,nd found the inhabitants throwing their 
manure into the river. I enquired the cause of 
this extraordinary practice, and was told, in 
reply, that their lands were naturally fertile 
enough without artificial aid. A few years will 
bring with them, as time has everywhere else, 
the penalties of wastefulness, in diminished crops 
ami lighter grains. The annual loss in the Uni- 
ted States, from the abuse of the soil, is to be 
computed not by millions of dollars, but by hun- 
dreds of millions. We know from statistical 
facts that the average production per acre has 
greatly diminished. In this State, less than a cen- 
tury ago, the average wheat crop was over twenty- 
five bushels per acre. It is now about twelve. 
In Ohio, one of the most fertile States in the 
Union, and but little more than half a century 
old, the average is about the same as in New 
Yoik. The virgin soil is already half worn out. 
In some of the Southern States the deterioration 
has been more rapid, and the average production 
is still less. These are the legitimate fruits of 
careless systems of husbandry. They arc not 
merely careless — they are systems of the mosi 

wasteful and culpable extravagance. The man 
who extracts from his land all it is capable of 



11 

producing, without giving back to it an equiva- 
lent in fertilizing substances, is in fact selling his 
farm in his crops. It is precisely the system of 
the prodigal, who spends his money capital, 
instead of living by a prudent economy on the 
interest. It was the same system of spoliation 
which exhausted the grain fields of Imperial 
Rome. Cato, more than two thousand years ago, 
and Columella, Varro, and Virgil, at a later day, 
wrote learnedly, and some of them gracefully, on 
the subject of agriculture. They laid down the 
most unexceptionable rules in regard to rotation 
of crops, the cultivation of plants, the treatment 
of the soil, and all the leading subjects of prac- 
tical husbandry. But the agriculture of Rome 
died out under their precepts, and the desolation 
of the campagna, once the prolific mother of 
nations, and now to a great extent overrun with 
noxious vegetation, and made uninhabitable by 
pestilential exhalations, attests the insufficiency 
of their systems. The Maremma, in ancient 
Etruria, was exhausted by the same process of 
spoliation ; it became nearly uninhabitable, and, 
like the campagua, exhaled an atmosphere of 
pestilence and death. But by the persevering 
efforts of Leopold the First, of Tuscany, against 
3 



1> 

great physical impediments, a large portion of it 
has been reclaimed and made healthful and pro- 
ductive. The ancients labored under disadvan- 
tages, which time has removed. They had no 
knowledge of the natural sciences, which are 
the offspring almost of our own generation. 
Analytical chemistry has taught us the compo- 
nent parts of the soil, and of the plants and 
grains which it produces. We know precisely 
the amount of each organic and inorganic ele- 
ment, which is lost to the earth in bringing a 
certain quantity of grain to perfection. AYo 
know that unless these elements are restored, the 
earth is robbed of so much of its vegetative 
power, and gradually becomes worn out and un- 
productive. 

I have dwelt upon this subject, gentlemen, lie- 
cause it is the great danger which threatens our 
agriculture, and which we must guard against by 
timely reform, if we would fulfil our destined 
work of supplying the increasing wants of the 
Eastern hemisphere. I desire to give it promi- 
nence, because I believe there has been no in- 
stance in the history of our race in which the 
fertility of the earth has been so rapidly wasted. 
It would have been otherwise, no doubt, if we 
had not been able to resort to boundless tracts 



10 

of fertile land in the West, which were open to 
emigrants at prices almost nominal. It was 
thought easier to wear out old lands and remove 
to new than it was to keep up the fertility of the 
old by manuring. It was a fatal error, as the 
condition of our agriculture shows. But for 
the extraordinary productiveness of the wes- 
tern States and Territories, the old States would, 
at this very moment, have been dependent 
on other countries for their supplies of food. 
The remedy for all this evil is in our own hands. 
It is to restore to our lands, by manuring, what 
we take from them in crops. We all know that 
this process of restoration has been going on for 
nearly a quarter of a century in Virginia, and 
that lands which had been worn out by successive 
crops of tobacco, corn and wheat, have been re- 
claimed and made to produce abundantly. 
It is estimated that thirty millions of dollars 
were added in value to the agricultural capital of 
that State, in twelve years from the commence- 
ment of this process of reform. The same results 
would follow the same measures in all cases 
in which the powers of the soil have been 
overtasked ; and it is not doubted by those who 
have closely investigated the subject, that the 
crop of Indian corn might be trebled without 



20 

enlarging the surface on which it is now culti- 
vated, and that millions of dollars might be added 

to the annual value of that crop alone. Nor can 
it be doubted that the production of the other 
great staple articles of food might be augmented 
in u like proportion, increasing enormously the 
wealth of the country, and furnishing larger sur- 
pluses for exportation. 

But it is time, gentlemen, that I should dis- 
miss this general topic and turn to others 
which more directly concern the agricultural 
interest of New York. Let me, before leaving 
it, return to the proposition with which I com- 
menced, and make a single additional observation 
in support of the concluding part of it, — that the 
increasing deficiency in the production of food in 
Europe can only be supplied by the United States. 
The remark I wish to make is this — that while 
labor is more abundant and cheaper in Europe than 
it is in the United States, we have three advanta- 
ges which give us, and will give us for years to 
come, a decided superiority over the countries of 
the Eastern hemisphere. 

1st. An immense region, unsurpassed in fer- 
tility, yet to be occupied. 

2d. A more intelligent laboring community, 
constantly improving through the influence of a 



21 

free and cheap press, and a social organization, 
which not only secures to every citizen the en- 
joyment of the fruits of his industry, but gives 
him a direct voice in the choice of his own rulers ; 
and 

3d. The great extent to which machinery is 
employed in agriculture as a substitute for men, 
counterbalancing largely the advantage of cheap 
labor in Europe. 

I do not venture to make an estimate of the 
extent to which mowing-machines, reapers, and 
other substitutes for manual labor have super- 
seded the latter in the cultivation of the soil in 
this country ; but I believe I am within bounds 
when I say that it is equivalent to five millions 
of men. These advantages must give us, in the 
competition for the European grain and provision 
market, a superiority over all other countries, 
and will make us, if we husband our natural re- 
sources with ordinary prudence, the granary of 
the World. 

In leaving the general topic which I have dis- 
cussed, and limiting our view to the State of New 
York, we cannot fail to be struck with the advan- 
tages which our farmers and agriculturists possess. 
First of all, we have, within our own boundaries, 
the emporium of the country, — not only destined, 



00 



in all probability, to remain for centuries, the 
principal commercial city of the Union, for ex- 
port, import, and distribution, but also to become 
the grain market of the World. It is a matter 
of the highest importance to our farmers to be 
bo near the chief point of export and import, not 
merely because the expense of transportation is 
usually in an inverse ratio of distance ; but be- 
cause great marts are always cash markets, and 
from the magnitude of their operations, and the 
accumulation of supplies for all the wants of men, 
they furnish readily, and at the lowest prices, all 
that the agricultural classes demand, in return for 
the products of their labor. Thus, the agricul- 
turist is always sure of selling for cash his surplus 
produce, and of buying what he needs at rates 
which an extended and active competition is cer- 
tain to reduce to the lowest standard. Artificial 
communication has greatly added to the value of 
this privilege. With the exception of a few se- 
questered localities, and these of very inconsider- 
able importance, the city of New York may be 
reached in twenty hours from the remotest district 
in the State. 

The capacities of the State for agricultural 
production, arising from variety of soil, unequal 
elevations of surface, and diversity in the geolo- 



23 

gical formation of different districts, may be 
favorably compared with those of any other State 
in the Union. A geographical district having 
throughout the same geological formation, and 
relying almost exclusively on a single class of 
productions, is much more in danger of suffering 
from unfavorable seasons than one, which, from 
the diversity of its surface, is enabled to apply its 
labor to a variety of products. In the former 
the failure of a crop may produce general distress, 
while in the other it would only be the cause of a 
partial inconvenience. 

In the final report of the geological survey of 
the State, it was divided, with reference to its 
physical constitution and agricultural capacities, 
into six great districts ; but, in a comparison of 
soils, on the basis of productiveness, they were 
reduced to five. Let us glance hastily at some of 
these divisions. 

The western and central district, extending 
from the Mohawk to Lake Erie, and embrac- 
ing all the intermediate counties, is in refe- 
rence to the great staple production, wheat, the 
first in importance. Though the average pro- 
duct is much lower than it was when the soil was 
first reduced to culture, it is still over fifteen 
bushels per acre, and, in this respect, has main- 



24 

tained its productiveness better than any other 
portion of the S'.ate. One reason unquestionably 
Lsj thai it is the most recently settled. But there 
is, probably , aLnother cause to be found in the geo- 
logical constitution of this district. It is under- 
laid in some portions by the Medina sandstone, 
rich in marls, and in others by shales and lime- 
stones, which, for the most part, disintegrate 
rapidly under the influence of atmospheric agents 
and resupply to the soil the mineral elements re- 
moved by the cultivation of wheat. It is in 
this point of view that the western and central 
district of New York may be regarded as one of 
the most reliable wheat-growing regions in the 
United States, and likely, with proper treatment, 
to remain so in all future time. 

The great wheat-growing districts of the Union 
consist, for the most part, of prairies in the wes- 
tern States and Territories, some of which have 
been for centuries denuded of trees, and have 
yielded little else than grasses, by the decaying 
remains of which the soil has been constantly en- 
riched. But whether with or without timber, 
the surface soil of these greal plains is much the 
same. It is composed of the carbonaceous re- 
mains of decayed and decaying vegetation, and is 
usually of a depth, which, to persons unacquaint- 



25 

ed with the principles of vegetation, and their 
influence on the soil, would seem to give it an ex- 
haustless fertility. It is for this reason, that the 
first cultivators have gone on, year after year, 
carrying away the produce of the land without 
giving anything back to it in compensation for 
the organic and inorganic elements which have 
constituted the food of the plants they have re- 
moved. The result has been everywhere the 
same. The crops have steadily deteriorated in 
quantity and quality. Experience has shown the 
expectation of undiminishing productiveness in 
new soils, no matter how fertile, to be a gross de- 
lusion. Science explains the cause of the dete- 
rioration. Vegetables, like animals, are developed 
by means of the food they consume. The former 
draw their sustenance directly from the earth. 
Every crop reduces the quantity of food the earth 
contains, and diminishes the conditions of its fer- 
tility ; and, after a certain period, the capacity 
of the earth to produce the same crop ceases. In 
other words, the supply of food which the crop 
requires for its production becomes exhausted. 
There is but one mode of guarding against this 
result, and that is by restoring to the earth the 
same amount of organic and inorganic matters 



26 

which have entered into the organization of the 
crops removed. This is the universal law of com- 
pensation in every department of physical life. 
Chemical analysis shows thai plants contain the 
same principal ingredients, in very different pro- 
portions. It shows, also, that soils, apparently 
similar, vary essentially in their chemical com- 
ponents, and that while one is better adapted to 
wheat, another contains in more suitable propor- 
tions the mineral substances required by other 
grains. If the cause of the deterioration of the 
wheat crop in this State could be ascertained, it 
is probable it would be found that the soil on 
which it has been cultivated possesses, in a 
reduced proportion, one or more of the mineral 
substances essential to the growth of that grain, 
and that it the deficiency were supplied the soil 
would possess the original fitness for its produc- 
tion. It is not probable that the counties on the 
North river and its vicinity will, for a long course 
of years, if ever, return to the cultivation of 
wheat to any great extent. The wants of New 
York, and of the large number of populous cities 
and towns which have sprung up in that portion 
of the State, call for an immense quantity of agri- 
cultural productions, many of which cannot be 
transported to greal distanced, and must, there- 



27 

fore, be produced near at hand. The question of 
remuneration will enter largely into the solution 
of every problem of this sort. A farmer who 
can raise two hundred bushels of potatoes on 
an acre of land, with a ready market for them 
at a moderate price, will find it more profitable 
than to raise thirty bushels of wheat on the same 
acre, at the highest market rate in times even, 
of scarcity. Milk, fresh butter, green vegetables 
of all kinds, and animals for the slaughter-house, 
are among the daily necessities of great towns, 
and most of them must be raised or prepared for 
the market in the immediate neighborhood. 
Their production will absorb most of the geo- 
graphical area of Long Island and the river coun- 
ties. But the western and central portions of 
New York are beyond the influence of these daily 
wants, and the only question as to the continued 
cultivation of wheat will be, whether with the 
advantage of a market near at hand, they can 
compete with the wheat districts of the West, 
and soil at remunerating prices. I had occasion, 
some five years ago, to settle an account on the 
basis of the price of wheat at Albany, in May, 
for the twenty preceding years, and it was ad- 
justed at the average of $1.32 per bushel. I 
doubt whether, in any twenty consecutive years 



28 

hereafter, it will .average less. At this price, a 
crop of twenty bushels the acre will pay liber- 
ally. There is reason to believe that the soil 
of the wheat-growing district of this State is as 
well fitted for the permanent cultivation of wheat 
as that of the western prairies ; for though the lat- 
ter are so rich in humus, or the remains of organic 
life, they are less liberally supplied with the 
mineral substances which wheat requires, and 
which are, to some extent, furnished by the con- 
stant disintegration of the rocks, on which the 
soil of the former district rests. In other words, 
if this supposition is correct, the former will, with 
the same treatment, produce, in a long succession of 
years, equally remunerative crops ; and if the culti- 
vation of wheat shall decline in this district, it 
will probably be from the growth of large towns 
in the western part of the State, demanding, like 
the city of New .York, a different class of agri- 
cultural products. 

Though the other great districts of the State 
are less adapted to the growth of wheat, they 
have a peculiar fitness for other productions. The 
counties on the east of the Hudson, which Mere 
denominated in the final report of the geological 
survey of the State, the maize district, are, from 
the geological character of the underlying rocks, 



29 

admiralty adapted to the cultivation of Indian 
corn. The district constituting the southern tier 
of counties, while it is productive in corn and 
coarse grains, is more particularly fitted for gra- 
zing. And the same remark is applicable to the 
counties which skirt the western bank of the 
Hudson. Our mountains, with the exception of a 
few granitic ridges and peaks, in the northern and 
southern highland districts, are susceptible of 
cultivation to their very summits. The eastern 
range, particularly, running as it does from north 
to south, is warmed on both sides either by the 
morning or the evening sun. 

There are two great districts which have been 
considered nearly worthless, but which, I think, 
are destined to contribute largely to the agricul- 
tural production of the State. The first of these 
lies between the upper waters of- the Hudson and 
Lake Ontario. It abounds in minerals and in 
timber ; the vallies are filled with a rich vegeta- 
ble mould, and the sides of the sharp peaks which 
rise to the maximum height of five thousand feet 
are capable of producing the most luxuriant 
grasses. It is a cold region, and on its greatest 
elevation the snow, in backward seasons, lies 
unmelted even into midsummer ; but beneficent 
nature seems to have distributed throughout all 



3d 

portions of her vast dominion, even the most inhos- 
pitable in their aspect, the substances which sup- 
port vegetable life. The Swiss, leaving the val- 
leys when the summer returns, ascend the Alps, 
almost to the elevation of perpetual snow, and 
building their chalets on the mountain-sides pas- 
ture their flocks and herds on narrow plateaus, 
which, from below, seem inaccessible. Here, 
indeed, as in our knowledge of the spiritual life, 
there is a limit to our progress upward. Man 
must not rise, even in the physical world, above 
his prescribed level. As we go up into the lofti- 
est mountains on our globe above the clouds, 
which God sends down to veil their summits from 
our sight, nature locks up her treasures of or- 
ganic life in chambers of frost, and warns us by 
signs as significant as that which scattered the 
presumptuous builders of Babel, that our mission 
here lies nearer the lower surface of the earth. 
But within our appointed limits everything is 
mercifully made to minister to our wants Even 
the most refractory rocks are instinct with 
the principles of organic life, and are slowly but 
steadily yielding them up to the silent agencies 
of nature. The granite ridges of our highland 
districts, which seem so unchangeable, are under- 
going perpetual alterations. Felspar and other 



31 

constituents of granitic rocks contain, in large 
proportions, the substances necessary for the 
nutrition of plants. Frost, and heat and rains, 
acting on their surfaces, are constantly break- 
ing them up, and thus these huge masses are 
forever distilling like dew, into the valleys 
beneath, the elementary principles of vegeta- 
ble life. The cattle, if left to themselves, 
would turn away from the rank vegetation of the 
meadows and plains, and gather around the bases 
of the mountains to feed upon the sweet grasses 
that spring up from the disintegration of their 
rocky breasts. It needs no prophet's vision to 
foresee that the valleys of this neglected district 
are to teem with waving grains, and that its 
mountains are to be covered, far up from their 
bases, with flocks and herds. 

The other district, to which I refer, was called 
in the geological survey of the State the Atlantic 
district. It consists of Long Island, stretching- 
out from New York Harbor 130 miles into the 
. Atlantic ocean. A most extraordinary delusion 
has prevailed in regard to the productiveness of 
the central portion of this district — a delusion 
natural enough with those who only know it by 
description; for one of the historians of the 
Island pronounced it " a vast barren plain" with 



32 

a soil "so thin and gravelly that it cannot be 
cultivated by any known process." And yet the 
surface soil of this whole region, with some in- 
considerable exceptions, consists of a rich loam, 
from twenty to thirty inches in depth, easily cul- 
tivated, and made highly productive without 
immoderate manuring. Some of the best farms 
in the southern part of the State have, during the 
last five years, been made in this condemned 
region; and it is shown by the agricultural sur- 
vey of the State that the Island produces fourteen 
bushels of wheat to the acre, considerably beyond 
the average of the State, and very little less than 
that of the western district. In a few places the 
gravel, with which the surface soil is underlaid, 
crops out, but these localities are believed not to 
exceed two per cent of the whole Island. I have 
been in the habit of visiting it in summer for 
twenty-five years, and have had the best oppor- 
tunity of noting its productiveness. There are 
farms which have been two centuries under culti- 
vation, and which, by good management, continue 
to yield abundant crops. Fields of corn, and of 
the most luxuriant grasses, run down to the ver}' 
sand hills which the ocean throws up, as it were, 
to bound its own encroachments. Here too, as 
on mountains of granitic rock, nature is busy with 



33 

her ceaseless transformations. The sand hills 
are no sooner thrown up by the sea than they 
begin to perform their office as a part of the solid 
earth by ministering to the sustenance of its inhabi- 
tants. Some weeks ago, while strolling over them, 
I was struck with the variety of the vegetation 
with which they were covered, and in a few min- 
utes I gathered specimens of twenty-one plants, 
some of them in bloom, with colors as rich and 
delicate as any to be found in cultivated fields — 
and all within a stone's throw of the breakers. 

" From these bleak sands spontaneous shoot 
"Fresh forms of re-created life — 
" The spear-shaped grass, the clustering fruit, 
" Born of the elemental strife." 

The seeds, borne down by rivers, or carried on 
the wings of the winds to the ocean, lie for awhile 
buried in the depths of the ungenial waters; but 
when, in the progress of time, they are thrown 
out upon the sands into the warmth of the sun- 
light, and are fed by the liquid streams of ammo- 
nia, which are distilled from heaven in summer 
showers, they burst into life, and clothe the naked 
strand in verdure and beauty. 

Of all the districts of the State, this has the 
finest summer climate, and the winters are miti- 
gated and made temperate by the surrounding 



:;i 

w aters. ( loser observation and successful experi- 
ment have dissipated misapprehension in regard to 

its fertility: they have shown that its soil is warm, 
genial, and productive ; and there is little hazard 
in predicting that it will, at no distant time, be- 
come the garden of the city of New York. 

Whether the agriculture of this State shall 
become what the natural capacities of the soil fit 
it to be, or whether the fertility of our lands 
shall be worn out by overtasking them, and we 
become the dependants of other communities for 
our daily bread, depends on ourselves. I believe 
our whole duty may be comprehended in a single 
precept. Let us give back to the earth in ma- 
nures and fertilizing substances as much as the 
earth gives to us in food. Nothing less will ful- 
fil the universal law. Nature, which has decreed 
that no atom of matter shall be destroyed, has 
decreed also that nothing can be taken with impu- 
nity from any one of her great kingdoms without 
making compensation for it. The elements, of 
which the earth, the air, the sea, their inhabi- 
tants, and the vegetable world are composed, dis- 
appear and appear again under new forms : the 
substances which enter into the organization of 
plants, are consumed, and are converted into the 
flesh of animals, and when these decay, are given 



35 

back to the earth to begin anew the same process 
of transformation ; but not the minutest particle 
shall perish until the end of all created things 
shall come. To preserve the productiveness of 
the earth, nature only prescribes to us a con- 
formity to her own law. Nothing is to be 
wasted or thrown away. The remains of all we 
consume, and of the food of our cattle, the por- 
tions of vegetable or animal matter which we 
reject as unfit for our use, are to be restored to 
the fields from which we have drawn our suste- 
nance. The distinguishing characteristic of our 
husbandry is wastefulness. Every great town 
draws largely on the fertility of the country for 
its subsistence, and gives back little in return. 
The offal and the remains of all the animal and 
farinaceous substances, which are consumed by 
the city of New York, given back to the soil from 
which they are derived, would be worth millions 
of dollars a year in the productive power they 
would create. The time will come when a thor- 
ough reform will be made in this respect — when 
our great cities, instead of draining into the 
ocean and into rivers the remains of what they 
consume, will gather them up and restore them to 
the earth, the fertility of which they are gradu- 
ally wasting. 



36 

In the meantime, lei those whose high voca- 
tion it is to cultivate the soil, to preside over 
the sources of production, from which all classes 
of men derive their sustenance, hear in mind a 
few great truths. The farmer who stints his 
fields, is as unwise and improvident as lie who 
starves his working cattle ; in both cases he is 
diminishing the ability of a faithful servant to be 
useful to him. The man who obtains from a field 
not properly fertilized, ten bushels of wheat, 
when by manuring he might have obtained 
twenty, is selling his labor at half its value. He 
who does not give back to his fields as much as he 
takes from them, sells their fertility in his crops ; 
and the fertility of the soil is the farmer's capital. 
He who permits the remains of animal or vege- 
table substances to decay around him, instead of 
incorporating them with the soil, impairs the 
comfort and heathfulness of his home, and by a 
slow but unfailing process prepares the destruction 
of his farm, and the impoverishment of his pos- 
terity. The farmer who will keep these truths in 
view, and act in accordance with the rules they 
suggest, will find his compensation in the increas- 
ing products of his farm, in the augmentation of 
his wealth, and in the promotion of the general 
prosperity. 



37 

An admirable work, by Baron Liebig, entitled 
" Letters on Modern Agriculture," has just been 
published by Wiley, in New York, and it would 
be well if it were in the hands of every agricul- 
turist in the State. It enters largely into the 
subjects on which I have briefly touched; and it 
shows that practical agriculture and scientific 
chemistry, instead of being in conflict, as some 
matter of fact men suppose, are, in truth, mutu- 
ally dependant on each other in the great work 
of reforming prevailing errors. It is the pro- 
vince of science to seek out and disclose princi- 
ples and causes, and it is the business of practice 
to use the knowledge thus acquired to the great- 
est advantage for the common purposes of life. 

Agricultural chemistry has rendered no greater 
service to the public than in showing the neces- 
sity of scientific training for the cultivation of 
the earth. It was a common opinion a few years 
ago, that any man who could hold a plough, or 
use a hay-fork with dexterity, was fit to be a 
farmer And yet his vocation is one of the most 
difficult, when considered in its numerous rela- 
tions to the chemical j^roperties of his fields, the 
influences of wind, moisture, and temperature 
varying in different localities, and the numberless 
causes which promote or obstruct the growth of 



38 

plants. If there is any pursuit, which more than 
all others requires training, with some knowledge 
of the great principles which concern the lru it- 
fulness of soils and the support of vegetable 111" , 
it is this. And yet, while we have for years had 
training-schools for medicine, and law, and tlieo- 
logy, we have, until recently, had none for agri- 
culture, the basis of all human industry. This 
is a great social wrong, which we have only just 
begun to reform by the institution of a school in 
the western district. 

But, gentlemen, I have already outrun the time 
which I had allotted to the performance of the 
duty with which you have honored me, and will 
hasten to a conclusion. I cannot do so without 
bearing testimony to the great service which this 
Society has rendered to the cause of American 
agriculture by its steady and its disinterested 
labors. The valuable information it has circula- 
ted through its annual publications for nearly 
twenty years, on all the great subjects of practi- 
cal husbandry, has given them new interest and 
importance, and the noble display of the last four 
days, in the products of the earth, in animals, 
and in agricultural machinery, attests its eminent 
success, and the strong hold it has gained on the 
confidence of the community. 



39 

In conclusion, gentlemen, let me repeat my 
conviction that no State in the Union possesses 
in a higher degree than ours the elements of a 
varied and abundant production. On such an 
occasion as this I could do no more than glance 
hastily at the leading characteristics of some of 
the larger divisions of our territory, in their rela- 
tions to certain classes of agricultural products. 
Half a century more will, I do not doubt, develop 
the peculiar fitness of each for the productions 
for which they are respectively best adapted by 
climate and physical constitution. Those who 
are to come after us, if we do our duty as faithful 
custodians of the productive powers of that por- 
tion of the earth which has been confided to us, 
will see the western district yielding, in undi- 
minished abundance, its annual contributions of 
wheat, the eastern equally bountiful in corn and 
the coarser grains, the valleys everywhere teem- 
ing with varied productions, the elevated portions 
of the southern tier of counties, and the mountain 
slopes of the northern and southern highlands 
covered with flocks and herds, and the Atlantic 
district pouring its daily supplies into the vege- 
table and fruit markets of the great city. Before 
the nineteenth century shall have ended, the 
island of New York will be covered with ware- 



40 

houses, and workshops, and dwellings, with a 
population so full as to be incapable of further 
condensation. He who shall live to that day, and 
shall stand on the heights of Fort Washington — 
an elevation worthy of the immortal name it 
bears — the future central point of the wealth and 
taste of the great commercial capital, — will look 
down on a fairer scene than that which bursts on 
the sight from the plain of Sorrento, or the clas- 
sical crest of Pausilippo. For he will look out — 
not over the sites of buried cities, or living cities 
abased by inaction and sloth, and on waters 
scarcely stirred by the keels of commerce, — but 
on rivers bearing on their bosom the mighty 
traffic of continents, and on cities and shores 
instinct with life, and liberty, and industry, and 
intellectual power. 



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